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MPAA Puts Words in Mouth of CA Attorney General
An anonymous reader writes "In another example of Microsoft Word meta data coming back to bite you, Wired News reports that a document circulated by the California Attorney General to fellow lawmakers supporting new restrictions on P2P software was actually authored by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America."
So I'm not surprised by this. It's been happening for a long time - his pockets (and the pockets of many others) are probably lined with MPAA/RIAA green.
metadata is a good thing, as long as it is accurate and useful. Go Metadata!
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
This new governmental policy of letting the corporations dictate public policy has just got to stop. America is being overrun by special interest politics, and with so many politicians with their hands in the cookie jar, the MPAA and related organizations essentially have a free hand in drafting legislation, policy notes, you name it.
I'd be very interested to know whether this Attorney General received campaign "contributions" from the MPAA, and how much. What do you have to pay to buy an Attorney General these days? $10,000? $50,000? I hate that everyone has their price, but what really makes me sad is how low that price is sometimes...
While a staunch anybody-but-Bush voting liberal, even I have to confess that rank corruption in the realm of intellectual property legislation is universal - the voting record declares authoritatively that both Democrats and Republicans alike have, on this issue at least, sold out to special interests with fervor and abandon.
Ah, who cares. I'll continue to reap rewards from vendors and lawyers who send .DOC files.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Considering the MPAA's activity in Tennessee this year. The MPAA is a super-powered lobbying machine, fueled by your movie theater ticket and DVD sales. We initially gave them the power to protect their products, which has been increasingly leveraged by turning consumer dollars into political "donations", which in turn allows them to increase the duration of their copyrights, ad infinitum.
However, if you kept reading your law book, you could have found that the 14th (IIRC) amendment has been established by the courts to extend the restrictions placed on the government in the bill of rights to the states as well.
IOW, California has no right to do this either.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Now, what was it Mussolini said about Fascism being about the merging of the State and Corporation?
Welcome to the future.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
That's because when you get to choose only between the Republicans and the Democrats, in reality, you have no choice at all.
It's about time Americans stopped calling themselves a democracy.
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As a P2P software developer and distributor, we believe you have the ability and responsibility to better educate consumers about these known risks, and to design your software in a manner that minimizes the risks. We view with grave concern reports that at least some P2P software developers may be adding features deliberately designed to hinder law enforcement in its prosecution of crimes using P2P software. Companies that engage in such conduct, and fail to meet the important responsibilities referenced above, harm the interests of consumers in our States.
Yes. God forbid we have anonymity or encryption.
[shrug] Well, as I said earlier, I have no interest in following directives like these. Software can be developed privately and via anonymous access through Freenet if necessary. It'd be a pain in the ass, but I'm
* Not interested in adding back doors to my work
* Not interested in stopping work on problems of how to provide secure/nonabusable/anonymous P2P systems (yes, part of that is to benefit users concerned about law enforcement attention).
If the AG wants to do something to go after people operating in legal gray area, he can go after people with radar detectors (speeding can, y'know, kill people, whereas a pirated song only means that a large company gets a small amount less money), or those committing corporate accounting hanky-panky, or any number of other more damaging actions. Admittedly, there aren't people with deep pockets and old-boy connections to the government trying to finance hunting people down (note: AG can also go after corrupt government officials, IMHO), but theoretically that AG was appointed to be the servant of the people, and as the House is demonstrating, popular support for the RIAA is awfully low.
May we never see th
Oh wait.. it's the same comapanies...
Well at least I'll hear about on the radio...
Oh wait those are the same companies too...
Well at least they will discuss it in the next session of congress...
Oh right I keep forgeting.....
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
What do you expect, that's normal business practice.
..."
It's called lobbying.
Big companies talks to politican and tells him: "We know our business better than you.
- P2P is bad for the public in gerneral and bad for my business.
- Terrorist use P2P to coordinate their attacks.
- P2P is used for distributing kiddie porn, P2P Software comes from shady sources.
- These are bundeled with spyware and zombie bots to attack other websites.
- What about $2000 I spend for your reelection champaign?
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Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
The worst thing is to put a blanket tax on a particular medium to the advantage of one or a few groups of people.
I don't download music, why should I be punished? My company doesn't burn music CDs, we archive our projects and data on CD and DVD, why should they have to pay the RIAA tax? My CD burner at home is used mostly for storing my digital pictures. Why should I pay the RIAA tax?
I hate to say this, but there is ALWAYS going to be some sort of theft going on somewhere. People still steal CDs from retail stores, after all. The internet may have made it easier to break the law, but if they just made it easy to comply with the law, instead of punishing their would be customers, copyright infringement would drop.
Apple and several other companies have already proven that given a reasonable and easy method to legally download music, people will do it. If those were real mp3s instead of a restricted format, I bet there'd be a LOT more people downloading. If there were a convenient method for me, I'd do it. I just haven't seen one that I think is worth it.
So I don't buy. I also don't steal. I simply do without. I shouldn't have to pay a fine for using the internet.
On the other hand, like the audio cassette and CD fine that I'm already forced to pay, I think it would legitize copyright infringement. After all, if I'm going to be punished one way or another, I might as well take advantage.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
But note: if the goal is to "legitimize" p2p so that artists get paid, how would you do it?
I would do nothing, since the exchange of information between two individuals is already a legitimate practice.
Of course, based on the hypothetical "solutions" you're suggesting, the real question you're looking to answer is "How do you maintain the viability of selling recordings?". If the people who stand to benefit from that can't figure it out, then let them go out of business. Performers can go back to making their money the way they have throughout the majority of human history: Live performances, and commissioned works. The best part about this? The money will be well spread amongst musicians instead of making a small few vastly wealthy and screwing everybody else. The idea of being able to create a recording and have it be an endless fountain of wealth with no more input of labor from the creator was broken anyway. Nobody deserves a free lunch.
2) Start viewing live performances as your bread and butter and your only means of actually, you know, making money within the industry. If your style of music doesn't lend itself well to live performance (techno, etc.), come up with a different form of spectacle to keep the audience entertained - they want to pay you money to participate in an event, and you need provide that event.
As you say, not everything lends itself to a live performance. But some things can only be done (and recorded) live.
Should the London Philharmonic income be limited to only those who can actually attend the performance? Or some group such as Mannheim Steamroller? I don't really want to buy a t-shirt from them.
Not everything lends itself to 'spectacle' or live performance.
After all, if I'm going to be punished one way or another, I might as well take advantage.
This is the exact same reason the murder rates were ridiculously high several hundred years ago in Europe (or at least Britain). There were so many poor people, the theft rate was quite high. The penalty for theft was made death by hanging, and hey, whaddaya know, that's the same as the punishment for murder. So why not kill the guy so you can take more of his stuff with less risk of getting caught?
If the punishments for minor infractions are made similar to those for greater infractions, people will tend to think less of committing the greater. If we're forced to pay more for using the Internet because of the people piracy, well then, why shouldn't we commit piracy, too? After all, we've already paid for it, haven't we?
Of course, they'll still sue you. And levy the taxes on a dozen forms of media, and raise CD/DVD/movie prices. Because they don't get that treating customers as criminals is not the way to handle this, and all they see is $$$$.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Here's the response:
1) if the record companies are making money off CD sales, then money can be made of CD sales
2) if the artists start to throw off the record industry and take control over their work, that could be their money instead of the record companies'
3) in an effort to screw the record industry now, p2p disenfrachizes those CD sales
4) that, in turn, disenfranchizes the hope of those same artists from reclaiming those CD sales
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Start viewing live performances as your bread and butter and your only means of actually, you know, making money within the industry.
Do you know who controls most music venues? Do you know who owns the most radio markets and controls the playlists? Do you know who earns the majority of the money from your concert performances? The answer is Clear Channel.. and no that's not tin-foil goodness, that sadly is true.
Corporate influence bought deregulation resulting from the Telecommunication Act of 1996 and the whole MPAA issue is probably small peanuts relative to Clear Channel's influence.